Published on The American Mind “Our cold civil war and partisan rancor,” writes Ryan P. Williams, “will only end when one party finally wins the argument about these fundamentals in a decisive and conclusive victory and uses that victory to solidify and sustain an enduring electoral coalition for a generation or more.” I’m skeptical such a “decisive and conclusive” victory is…
Category: Conservatism
A Neocon Grows in Brooklyn [MODERN AGE] Can a neoconservative support Trump? Norman Podhoretz did.
Published in Modern Age Neoconservatives have never been especially popular on the right, to say nothing of the left. Since they emerged as a genuine political force in the early 1980s, they have been faulted by traditionalists for underemphasizing the role of morality in domestic affairs, yet denounced by realists and libertarians for overemphasizing the role of…
Who Are the Ex-Conservatives? [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE] Perhaps it is easier to move right than left.
Published on The American Conservative The May/June issue of The American Conservative featured Jonathan Bronitsky’s review of Daniel Oppenheimer’s new book Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century. This is the second installment in a series of articles responding to the original review. Be sure not to miss Oppenheimer’s “Why…
Review: “Exit Right,” by Daniel Oppenheimer [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE] Many eminent intellectuals became conservative by rejecting the utopian schemes of leftist radicalism.
Published in The American Conservative Throughout the Cold War, conservatives had a certain advantage in the competition of ideas—the battle between the West’s right to pursue happiness and the East’s pursuit of the right to happiness. The USSR—not to mention its despotic affiliates across the globe—was more than a temporal nightmare; it was the actualization of…
Is Trump Strauss’ed Out? [DAILY CALLER] Is The Donald the embodiment of the political philosopher's precept of "close reading"?
Published on The Daily Caller A primer: Leo Strauss was a German-born political philosopher who died in 1973 and caused the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sound strange? Well, a number of academics – and other unserious individuals – have managed to build entire careers on that very conjecture. Of course, given the type of…
Review: “Jack Kemp,” by Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE] How conservative was the "bleeding-heart conservative"?
Published in The American Conservative When prominent conservatives pass away, they often receive polite, if not laudatory, obituaries from publications like the New York Times and the New Republic. This has led those on the right to sarcastically quip that, for those on the left, the only good conservative is a dead conservative. But these days, a…
The Real Irving Kristol [NATIONAL INTEREST] Contrary to popular belief, the godfather of neoconservatism was a consistent adherent of realpolitik in international affairs.
Published in The National Interest In 1990, the publisher of The National Interest wrote an essay to mark the fifth anniversary of the magazine. It was called “Defining Our National Interest.” In it, he asked, “But what about the moral dimension of American foreign policy? It has always been there and, since we are an…
Love Thy Out-of-State Student [NRO] It's anti-conservative — and anti-prosperity — to insist that public colleges and universities reserve spots for in-state applicants.
Published on National Review Online ‘Tis the season. Millions of starry-eyed teenagers from all over the country are beginning the four-year (hopefully), alcohol-and-ramen-infused odyssey of grasping that the American diploma ain’t that remarkable. On that uplifting note, let’s chat for a couple of minutes about the Ivory Tower. So I enjoy dropping into local Democratic…
Why We Couldn’t Solve the Jewish Liberalism Puzzle [NRO] Certain sociocultural causes of Jewish political behavior have been neglected.
Published on National Review Online Given the attention lavished on American Jewish liberalism, one could sensibly conclude that it ranks alongside Stonehenge and Bigfoot as one of the world’s greatest mysteries. Indeed, the “phenomenon” has inspired countless theses, lectures, surveys, and symposia, not to mention innumerable familial quarrels. Norman Podhoretz, the former longtime editor of Commentary,…
Prophet of Hope [NATIONAL AFFAIRS] Few public intellectuals have shaped America's self-understanding as profoundly as Ben Wattenberg.
Published in National Affairs In Washington, “neoconservative” is fired off as a pejorative so frequently and haphazardly that even the wariest of hawks have been wounded by its stigma. That is why it is so ironic that the Washingtonian who has most unabashedly championed the ideology remains virtually unscathed. “I am a paleoliberal, a supply-side infrastructuralist,…